January 9th, 1978: Alice Abbott

"They're gay," Lily is saying. Her voice is a whisper, even though they've cast Muffliato so that the boys don't overhear. "I can't believe that Sirius and Remus are gay."

It's Monday morning, which means Charms class. With Emmeline gone (and Peter and Mary not having picked up the N.E.W.T. level), there's an even number of them now, which means the boys aren't all three working together in the back of the classroom like they usually do. Instead, Remus and Sirius are huddled in back, James off to the side with Marlene, and Lily and Alice are paired up across the room from them as all of them attempt to blast a hole in their own cement block a couple meters around using the Reductor Curse.

"We technically don't know for sure whether they're gay or not," Alice reasons. "Sirius has a long track record of being interested in women, and Remus—hasn't shown any interest in anyone at all until now, honestly. Sirius might be a fluke for him the way that he's one for Sirius."

"I just can't believe that none of us noticed it. I mean, I don't have a problem with them seeing each other. Do what makes you happy. I just… wow."

Alice blows a hole in her block that's maybe a couple centimeters in diameter. Dust settles everywhere, including in her hair. "Are you sure you don't have a problem with it?" she says gently. "Because you sound a little like it's freaking you out."

"It's not freaking me out, it's… I mean, do you know anybody else who's gay? Or anyone who's anything other than straight?"

"No," Alice admits. "At least, not to my knowledge. But they say it's common enough that everybody knows somebody who's gay, so why should it be surprising that that turned out to be two of our friends?"

"I guess you're right—I just can't get my head around it. It's one of those things everybody talks about happening, but that you never expect to happen to you or someone you know."

"So you're fine with Remus being a werewolf—" she also now drops to a whisper despite the Muffliato charm—"but you're not fine with him being in a gay relationship?"

"Remus being a werewolf wasn't something he chose. It was done to him."

"And he chose to have romantic feelings for Sirius?"

Lily tries the curse again, decimating about half of her block in a cloud of dust. "That's fair. I just figured it was a choice because, like… they're deciding to act on how they feel, you know? No one is making them do that."

"But they should be able to make that choice for themselves, at that point, you know? Just because no one is making them do it doesn't mean that they shouldn't do it. It's not like they're hurting anybody."

"That's true," says Lily. "They're not hurting anybody."

Honestly, Alice is surprised that Lily is confiding in her about her feelings about the Remus and Sirius thing at all. It's not like Lily and Alice are close the way that Lily and Marlene are close, or even that they've connected as much as Lily and Emmeline did when the two of them were both on the outskirts of the Gryffindors. They've always been academic rivals—Alice is on track to be valedictorian, but Lily is the one who got picked for Head Girl—and Alice supposes that that's always gotten in the way of her ability to see Lily as a close friend, even if they run in the same circles.

But, well—Lily can't talk to Marlene about it because Sirius is Marlene's ex-boyfriend, and she could talk to Emmeline about it, but probably feels weird bringing up something so superficial to somebody who's in the hospital for a suicide attempt. There's James, but that might be weird for her, too, since Sirius is James's best friend. Apparently, Alice is next on the list.

"Anyway," Lily says, "I thought you were over Remus being a werewolf."

"Wha—oh. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I am. I just meant—that's a much bigger thing with much bigger real-life implications to get upset about, and yet that's the part that you're fine with. It's just weird to me, I guess."

"And you're sure you're okay with it?"

"I said I am, didn't I?" says Alice a little snippily.

It's a fair question, to be honest, and Alice shouldn't have snapped at her. "I'm sorry," she says. "I guess I've just gotten tired of people telling me I need to check my privilege. I get it. I have a whole society full of pureblood supremacists on my side, and my life will never be hard the way it is for Muggle-borns or werewolves or—or—or gay people. Whoever. I feel personally called out every time we do War Stories, and I'm not saying that the things people share are wrong, but it's just…"

"Just what?" says Lily patiently.

"It's just—on the one hand, everybody at Hogwarts is yelling at me all the time about not understanding what Muggle-borns go through, or not understanding why pureblood society works the way it works. And then I go home for Christmas, and my parents are constantly going on about how I'm learning garbage up at school and keep bringing nice, pureblood boys to family functions for me to meet because they don't approve of my Muggle-born boyfriend. I feel like no matter what I do, I lose."

"Nobody's yelling at you, Alice."

"I know, but you know what I mean."

Lily reduces her block to rubble, then sticks her tongue out and tries to conjure another one. It turns up mossy and smelly. "Ah, well. Just—you're never going to be able to please everyone, right? So the best anybody can do is sort through the information available to them, find out what they can, and draw their own conclusions. Stick to them when you can, but change your mind if you learn more that sways you the other way. You don't really buy into everything your parents are telling you, do you?"

"Well… no," Alice admits.

Lily nods. Her next Reductor Curse misses the mossy block, instead hitting one of the classroom walls and bringing the blackboard clattering to the ground as the bricks behind it crumble.

xx

Alice and Dirk both have next period free, so she tracks him down in the library and pulls up a chair next to him. "Hey," she says, pecking him on the lips.

"What's new?" says Dirk brightly.

"Oh, you know. Sirius and Remus are dating now, and people are losing their minds over it."

"Black and Lupin?" Alice nods. "I would not have guessed that. Well, then again… they did always go together to Slughorn's parties, didn't they?"

"Yes, but only in the same way that James always took Peter."

"Mmh. I can see people being up in arms about it if they were close to them and didn't see it coming, but if not—who really cares as long as they're happy?"

"Well, Marlene's not happy," says Alice. "She's not anywhere near over Sirius yet, and that's got to hurt. She's been acting weird around all of us, really, ever since the news broke. But everyone else will be fine, I think. They're just surprised."

"It probably doesn't help that you all spend so much time together," Dirk says. "People seeing it right in front of their faces all day must just make it feel like a bigger deal than it is."

"We don't spend that much time together," says Alice.

Dirk smiles absently. "You're just saying that because you're in the middle of it and can't see it for what it is."

"I do not—!"

"Whoa, hey, slow down, I didn't say I want you to stop hanging out with your friends or anything," says Dirk. "I just think—well—you do see them an awful lot. Sometimes I think you love them more than me, if I'm being entirely honest, and—and I don't think they're very good influences on you."

Frankly, Alice thinks she spends rather a lot of time with Dirk, and has done in the whole nearly two years that they've been together. For that matter, she's been friends with most of the Gryffindor seventh years since she was eleven years old—that doesn't just go away just because she's got a boyfriend from a different social circle. As to her Gryffindor friends being bad influences on her—she knows Dirk is talking about the Order, and she doesn't know how much longer she can stand the world ganging up on her to say that she ought to stay out of the war effort just because she has pureblood privilege and her own life isn't at stake as long as she doesn't get involved.

Sometimes, Dirk infuriates her. Sometimes, she even thinks she's just staying with him to spite her parents, so that she doesn't bring home a good little pureblooded boy like they want her to.

She doesn't say any of this, of course. Instead, she just takes a seat and rummages through her bag for her Herbology textbook.

xx

Word about Sirius and Remus seems to be traveling even faster than it did when Alice and her friends singlehandedly cost Gryffindor four hundred house points, and that's saying something, because people were pretty pissed about that. Still are, to be honest—Alice still gets dirty looks every time she walks into the common room or takes a seat at the house table in the Great Hall. But today, when she and the other seventh years climb through the portrait hole after dinner, somebody gives a big whoop, there's applause, and Sirius positively eats it up, bowing dramatically and then seizing Remus's hand.

Remus seems to relish the attention quite a bit less, if at all. He's blushing, and he doesn't let go of Sirius's hand but doesn't lean in any closer to him, either. "Come on, nothing to see here," calls Alice, and after some snickering, people gradually turn away from them.

"It's my turn to talk to Emmeline," Remus says, still pink in the face. "Who's got the Floo powder?"

"It's upstairs in my trunk," says Peter.

"Got it."

Alice, meanwhile, has spotted where Marlene is sitting alone and looking like she's in a positively foul mood, so she gears herself up for impact and departs the group to head over to her. "Hey," she says, plopping down next to her on the sofa.

"Hey," says Marlene moodily.

"Ignore it," Alice advises her. "Your biggest priority should be you, not him."

"Pretty damn hard for me to ignore it when he's rubbing my nose in it everywhere I go."

"He's not doing it on purpose. It's—sort of hard for any of us to avoid each other, with our schedules and, you know, limited places to go."

"You're one to talk," snorts Marlene. "You've as good as completely ditched us for Dirk Cresswell."

"God, I can't win with you people! First he says I'm spending too much time with you, then you say I'm spending too much time with him—what else is up for discussion? Shall we have a rousing debate about whether I'm a pureblood supremacist or a disgrace to the name Abbott? Because I've been called both in the last month—and—and…"

Alice usually doesn't have outbursts like this, but she feels like she's wound so tight all of the time and is getting absolutely sick of everybody telling her what to do and who to be.

"Way to make it all about you," says Marlene, but Alice doesn't even care, at this point.

"Go on, then, see if I stick around and try to help you," she says.

Marlene huffs and gets back to her reading—Muggle novels, it looks like, not homework, for once. If Alice weren't so tightly wound all the time, she'd be incredibly sick of spending all of her free time on homework, but fortunately for her, she tends to concentrate on her studies when the rest of her life is a mess. She's been acing all of her classes all year—wonder why.

They have another War Stories meeting later that night in the Great Hall. Last time was Lily and James's first time giving everybody homework: come to the next meeting with someone new from a different house than you. It was a good thought, but still, Alice doesn't see any Slytherins when she counts faces.

They haven't made very much progress at all on the inter-house unity front. Although War Stories is going well, it's still mostly reaching the same core group of people who come to all the meetings and already agree with group leaders on all of their major points. The part of the student body they need to get through to is entirely underrepresented, and none of them are quite sure how to fix it.

After the meeting, the Gryffindor seventh years, sans Mary and Emmeline, hang back to talk strategy for future meetings. Sirius suggests they resume pranks again—maybe stage a part two to the common room lockout from last year—but after how last year's efforts culminated in two deaths, they've been trying to avoid linking their actual identities to anything that happened last year, so hosting pranks sponsored explicitly by the people behind War Stories is out. "I think it's honestly going to boil down to more homework," Lily says. "Task people with starting a conversation with a Slytherin before the next meeting. Doesn't even have to be about blood politics specifically—just open that door so they can walk through it later."

They talk in circles for a few more minutes, but Lily's suggestion of gradually building relationships is the best that anybody's got. For her part, Alice has her eyes mostly on Marlene, who sits behind Lily at the table and won't meet anybody's eyes, least of all Sirius's.

Sometimes, Alice just doesn't understand how people get so worked up over other people. Of course, she's one to know—she's arguably been the Gryffindor on the furthest outskirts of their circle for months now.

It's a lot easier to blame people for loving each other too much when you won't let anybody get close.